When I was married, my husband and I did not take any fun trips together. We did not have a honeymoon and the only times we got out of town was to spend a holiday weekend with my parents at the beach or to crash at a hotel for a computer geek conference (note: the husband would go to the conference and I would go sight-seeing/shopping by myself). During the last year and a half when I was dealing with the separation, divorce, short sale of the house, finances, etc. it was hard to imagine when (if ever) I'd be able to get away for a trip or vacation.
My boyfriend and I have been dating for over a year now and we've been having "talks" about our future together: moving in together, buying a house, marriage, kids, etc. One thing we agreed on was the want and need of taking overnight trips/vacations together. We both agreed that we had reached that stage and it was a lot of fun to plan this trip. Originally we were going to Atlantic City, New Jersey but trying to find a reasonably priced hotel room online was difficult. Same thing for the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He came up with the idea of Richmond, Virginia and at first I was a little put off by it. Richmond is not exactly a vacation spot in my mind, but it turned out to be the perfect little getaway for us.
We found an AMAZING deal on a 4 star hotel room in Glen Allen, VA (a suburb of Richmond) for $60/night! The hotel was beautiful! I've never stayed at anything like it before. It had a country club feel to it--located next to a golf course, sprawling property on top of a hill, and lots of upscale amenities. I have to give my boyfriend the credit for finding this place. He is my savvy shopper!
When we arrived in Richmond on Saturday, the first thing we did was visit the Edgar Allan Poe Museum. Since I'm an English teacher, this was a must-see attraction on our visit. It was a cute place and while I couldn't take pics of the exhibit, I did snap some pics of the garden and outside of the building.
Next stop was lunch at Buz and Ned's Barbeque restaurant. If you like the red-sauce kind of bbq, this is the place to go! I really enjoyed the down-home atmosphere of this place. It's like a little slice of country in the big city.
We still had time before check-in at the hotel, so we drove up to Glen Allen to James River Cellars Winery. They were having their summer open house for the July 4th weekend so the tasting fee was WAIVED. Woo hoo!
At this point, we were only planning on visiting 2 wineries and I have a 6 bottle wine rack at home. So I was thinking I'd buy 3 bottles from this winery and 3 from the other we would visit the next day. I walked out of there with bottles of Vidal Blanc, Hanover, and Chardonnay.
Next we checked in to the hotel and crashed for a bit. I went for a swim at the hotel's pool while my boyfriend watched TV in the room. Later on we got cleaned up, went out for dinner, and then saw Transformers 4 at the nearby movie theater.
On Sunday, we went for breakfast at Panera and planned out the rest of the day. We did have an plan drafted but I left the paper in the room...oops! One thing I wanted to do was go to the other nearby winery. While we were looking at the winery map for the state, we noticed there were a few wineries a short drive away. So any plans we had for visiting museums, walking around Richmond, etc. went out the door when we saw 4 nearby wineries on the map.
The first winery, Cooper, is a new "green" facility with a beautiful tasting room and deck overlooking the vineyards. When we got there, the "plan" was to just buy one bottle at each of the wineries (and maybe even not buy any at one) to fill the remaining 3 slots on my wine rack. Whoops! I walked out of Cooper with a bottle of Chardonnay (my boyfriend's favorite) and a bottle of Noche (has hints of chocolate in it). Here are some pics of the winery:
Next, we went to Windsong Winery. We had to go down a LONG gravel road to get there, but it was cute. It wasn't exactly my favorite tasting. They were out of the best wine we tasted, so I was able to get out of there with just one bottle! It's called Dornfelder.
After Windsong, we drove over to Byrd Winery and that was our favorite of the day! All of their wines were great and my boyfriend even liked one of their red wines (he's a hard core white wine fan). Of course that meant we had to get 2 of that wine (Apple Concord) and I also bought another red wine (Raven Red...named after Edgar Allan Poe). The tasting was great and the owners are wonderful. Our favorite part of the winery was the sprawling backyard that overlooked the mountains. Check out these pics:
Our last winery for the day was Grayhaven and we were not that impressed. First, they were all out of their white wines. Second, there were flies buzzing all around. Third, the wines, although made of South African grapes grown in the Virginia mountains, were overpriced in our opinion. Byrd, by the way, was VERY affordable. Still, I did purchase a bottle of their Sojourn red which goes well with BBQ apparently.On Monday, we packed up and checked out of our hotel and drove back home. We stopped in New Kent County to check out Saude Vineyard. According to the Virginia Winery map, it was supposed to be open this past spring. We drove up and saw construction trucks and materials lying around. The owner was there and gave us a tour of the almost-finished building. They are opening later this month and we received an invitation for a free tasting. We're really excited about that. One thing that did get my attention is when the owner told us that they can host events at their winery and my boyfriend later mentioned that it would be a cool place for us to get married. EEK! Yes, we've talked about marriage before, but it was just nice to hear him talk more assertively about our future :)
The last stop on our weekend getaway was the Colonial Downs racetrack. We had a lot of fun placing our super-fecta 10 cent bets on races 1-9. We were only off by one number to win the last race. Boo! Oh well, better luck next time right?
The favorite part of my weekend was coming home and loading up the wine rack. Look at that beauty!
